Comandone A, et al. – This study targeted salvage treatment in order to assess its efficacy in pretreated adult type soft tissue sarcomas (STS). Treatment with the recommended regimen resulted in better survival in these patients. This study unveiled a 3 months gain in overall survival (OS) and an almost double response rate (RR).

Methods

• Researchers searched PubMed, Web of Science, SCOPUS, EMBASE, CINAHL, and The Cochrane Library for randomized phase II/phase III trials exploring second- or beyond therapy lines in pretreated metastatic STS.
• Data were extracted by two independent investigators; the quality of eligible studies was resolved by consensus.
• They pooled hazard ratio (HR) of death and progression (OS and progression-free survival [PFS]) and odds ratio (OR) for response rate (RR) in a fixed- or random-effects model according to heterogeneity.
• In addition, study quality was assessed with the Cochrane's risk of bias tool, and publication bias with funnel plots.

Results

• They selected 10 randomized trials.
• 0.81 was the pooled HR for death (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.73–0.9).
• It was reported that second-line therapy reduced the risk of progression by 49% (HR=0.51, 95% CI 0.34–0.76).
• Results revealed that this translated into an absolute benefit in OS and PFS by 3.3 and 1.6 months, respectively.
• Furthermore, RR with new agents or chemotherapy doublets translated from 4.3% to 7.6% (OR=1.78, 95% CI 1.22–2.50).